Humongous Moves

The Royal Naval docks of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada are cluttered with decommissioned Oberon-class submarines. Once a vital weapon of the Cold War, these O-boats are heading for the scrapyard, all except the HMCS Onondaga, which is destined for a maritime museum 620 miles away, if it can ever get there. The Site historique maritime de la Pointe-au-Père is located in Rimouski, Quebec. Follow a daring team of marine engineers as they attempt to tow this 1,400-ton submarine up Canada's coast in the face of a hurricane, and then haul it over rocky shores and onto a perilously steep railway in 2008. It's a massive move, and the stress factor is just as large.

In late 2012, a team of engineers attempts to move two historic locomotives across the Atlantic to the British National Railway Museum in York, United Kingdom. They are two of the six remaining A4-class steam engines: the Dwight D. Eisenhowser from the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin and the Dominion of Canada from the Canadian Railway Museum in Montreal, Canada. Three other A-4s are also moved (not part of this episode) to join the Mallard at the British Nationial Railroad Museum for 2013 celebrations of the 75th anniversary of Mallard breaking the world speed record for steam. On July 3, 1938, the Mallard reached 126 mph.

A 200-ton WWI howitzer needs to be transported to a museum nearly 400 miles away in less than a week. The BL 18-Inch Railway Howitzer, displayed at the Royal School of Artillery in Larkhill, England, is the world's largest surviving railway gun. It is the only remaining one of this type out of five built and fires an 18-inch, one-ton shell almost 13 miles. The Spoorwegmuseum, the Dutch national railway museum in Utrecht, Holland, borrowed the gun in March 2013.

The Sikorsky S-92 is the ultimate search and rescue helicopter, a high-tech, all-weather machine. The Shetland Coastguard is eagerly awaiting the arrival of one but it's still at the Sikorsky Aircraft factory in Coatesville, Pennsylvania 3,500 miles away. That's too far for a chopper to fly alone, so it's going to need an escort. Enter the Antonov 124, a Cold War warrior with record-breaking cargo capabilities. Antonov is big, but so is the Sikorsky S-92, an eight-ton beast. Can a team of engineers squeeze this $30 million aircraft in and get her to the Shetlands unscathed?

A team of engineers is on a mission to build and sail seven floating homes across the Netherlands, from a factory in Urk to a new waterborne community in Meerstad 70 miles away. The route, however, proves to be an obstacle course of boat traffic, unexpected swells, and low bridges, not to mention precarious cranes and narrow country roads when they reach stretches of land along the way. Will these luxury dream homes make it to their destination undamaged? Take a ride through a maze of Dutch riverbanks and waterways to find out.

The Canadian Coast Guard, which protects the beachfront city of Vancouver, is in desperate need of a new breed of rescue vehicle. The solution is the AP1-88 Hovercraft, a 100-foot marine machine. The challenge is it's still being assembled in Southampton, England at Griffon Hoverwork's factory 9,000 miles away. Follow a team of engineers as they attempt to build and haul it across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and up the West Coast of the U.S. and Canada without incident. The new hovercraft is delivered in November 2016 and named Moytel, meaning 'to help each other.'